As an old(er) guy, it’s an effort to keep up with the slang slung by the youth of America.
But then there’s Urban Dictionary. It’s an online crowdsource dictionary for slang words and phrases, operating under the motto “Define Your World.” Every new word or phrase has a slew of definitions typed in by … anybody.
A not-so-new word, which I heard a while ago from my youngest child, is “butthurt.” It’s a really wonderful word with innumerable uses in the modern world, full of angry Karens and Kens (yes, Urban Dictionary decided that a male Karen is a “Ken”).
One definition of butthurt on Urban Dictionary is: “a person who is highly sensitive over minor things.” Another: “Being passive aggressive, silent, awkward, mad, raging, usually done all at the same time.” Yet another: “Taking things way to literally and being sore about the dumbest of topics.”
I haven’t put in my own definition (yet), but to me it’s a person (Karen or Ken) who is just waiting to pounce on some woke (or anti-woke) thing — it seldom matters its import, it can be sausages or a guy laying down on stage during the Emmys or a Disney character.
And in recent weeks, that’s exactly what it has been. We are now a population of perennially butthurt people, moaning about the dumbest things possible. Social media swooped in this century to give a voice to … well, anybody … but now we’re here, with every idiot immediately tweeting and Facebooking how they feel about this thing or that thing.
“I just lost respect for a once great Tennessee company,” one person wrote on Facebook last month. Another comment said: “Not going to happen! Cracker Barrel used to be so good, we looked forward to eating in them but not anymore. Another wrote simply, “bad choice.”
>Hang on. It’s sausage, people. Order it, don’t, whatever, but it’s sausage. Is it woke? Maybe, but my vegetarian wife might appreciate the choice.
Do we really have to go to the mat over plant-based sausage? How is that a defining issue in America just now, when the economy is in the dumper, crime across the country is out of control and, oh yeah, we might just be at the cusp of World War III?
Then late night non-funnyman Jimmy Kimmel over the last weekend created, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a “controversy.”
“For those who missed it,” the butthurt people at People magazine wrote, “Kimmel, 54, played dead onstage while [actress Quinta] Brunson, 32, accepted her milestone award. Despite Brunson’s prompts for him to stand up, Kimmel committed to the gag by lying on the floor motionlessly during her speech.”
Oh the humanity!
CNN pumped the “controversy” with a piece headlined: “Quinta Brunson had to step over Jimmy Kimmel to accept her Emmy.”
Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images
Dear God, no! She had to step over him!
“Later backstage,” CNN wrote, “Brunson addressed the moment, saying the bit ‘didn’t bother me that much,’ adding that Kimmel was an early supporter of her and ‘Abbott Elementary.'”
Wait. She wasn’t even mad?! But you said … oh, never mind.
We are still in the early days of the butthurt generation (to be clear, it’s us, the Baby Boomers, who are the worst, but there’s still a lot of us around). Everyone is outraged about everything. You can find it all out there, on the interwebs — someone is butthurt about the very thing you’re mad about!
But when I talk to my kids, their friends, other young people, they’re not endlessly outraged. One told me living like that is just too exhausting. The solution: Disengage — skip Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, just live your life.
And life is far too short to be butthurt. Just wait a day, and plant-based sausage or Kimmel doing a gag will be replaced by the next thing to be butthurt about. In fact, they already have been: the butthurt of the world are now outraged that a Disney character is (gasp!) being portrayed as black.
Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb
The thing is: You don’t have to go there. Be a duck — let it just wash off you.
You’ll be better off for it.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.